It is not uncommon for any given run of clingstone peaches to include in random assortment some with sound pits, which can be pitted by twisting or torquing the peach halves from the held pit, and some with unsound or split pits, which cannot be so pitted.
Heretofore the halves of clingstone peaches pitted by torque-type drupe pitters, such as shown and described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,826,227, issued Mar. 11, 1958, have been separated, after bisection of the peaches, into two classes, one being the halves and sound pits from which the halves have been twisted, and the other class being the halves containing the pit halves of peaches in which the pits were unsound or split precluding holding or gripping by the pit-holding blades that therefore bisected the whole peach body and the pit.
Such separation or segregation has been accomplished either by manual inspection and selection or automatically by incorporating in the torque pitter a diverter such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,442,313, issued May 6, 1969, Either of these operations made necessary the expensive step of rehandling and respitting those peach halves containing pit-halves, by subsequent torque or spoon pitting.
It has also been proposed heretofore to "convert" a torque pitter from its normal operation of twisting the peach halves loose from a held pit to a spoon pitting operation, such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,829,591, issued Aug. 14, 1974. The difficulty with the latter proposal is that it requires a replacement of parts (the cutting spoon and associated mechanism for the pit-gripping edges on the blades) and, when converted, the pitter cuts or cores the pits from all peaches presented to it. Since the percentage of peaches having split pits in any crop varies greatly and is not subject to segregation prior to pitting, the converted pitter operating only in the spoon pitting mode eliminates the advantages and economics of torque pitting with respect to all the peaches with sound pits.